Sara Watkins – ‘Young In All The Wrong Ways’ REVIEW

Sara Watkins’ new album Young In All The Wrong Ways is record of growth, movement, and goodbyes.

Though there is much to praise about the first two Sara Watkins records—her self-titled debut and 2012’s Sun Midnight Sun—it is undeniable, even upon first listen, that with Young In All The Wrong Ways, Sara Watkins has made the best record of her career. It’s an album that feels both like a departure and an arrival, and so perhaps it’s fitting that much of the record—which Watkins has described as a kind of break-up album with herself—seems to orbit ideas of momentum, growth, and movement. Take, for example, the single, “Move Me,” which has Watkins louder and more aggressive than, say, her days in Nickel Creek. “So much is repetition/we mimic old decisions,” she sings, frustrated and fed up, until we reach the chorus and she’s begging—or daring—the “you” of the song to snap her out of her stagnancy. And Watkins is at her lyrical best on “Invisible,” a song so exquisitely written and produced as to be a standout on a record with no shortage of them.